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Second Life® is Turning 12! Join the Celebration!

SL12B — or the Second Life® 12th Birthday — isn’t exactly news to anyone at this point.
Pretty much everyone has talked about it at one time or another over the last month. The talk has increased over the last few days as things start to go up a notch in anticipation of the event opening on Sunday 21st June 2015 at 12pm noon.

Just a reminder for those of us in the southern hemisphere it will be open early Monday morning. In fact, let’s be uber specific, 5am AEST on 22nd June will be 12pm SLT (PDT) 21st June.

Frustrations aside, the Second Life 12th Birthday is set to be amazing! By all accounts it will be bigger than previous years, but better? Well that’s up to you! The dreams are in the eyes of the beholder after all!
If that wasn’t an obvious lead in to the theme I’m not sure what is. This year the Second Life® birthday celebrations are centred around the theme What Dreams May Come.
This is a pretty broad theme and one that has definitely inspired a lot of different interpretations.

The Welcome Station. He’s definitely welcoming don’t you think!?

By now you may have noticed my photo’s.Sigh.
Most of the photo’s I was able to grab (aside from the last one) were taken at the welcome area. Partly because I was a little hung up on the ghost-esque train — it looks like Slimer from Ghostbusters and I’m not even sure if that was intentional but I love it and you should absolutely check it out if you’re even the tiniest bit geek — but mostly because my graphics card is giving up the ghost, pun intended, and copious amounts of tears ensued as I tried to snap more photo’s and couldn’t.

The Welcome Station stairs. I fell in love with this view.

I did however, still make the most of my early access by jumping on the Pod Tour and learning about some of the exhibits, history of Second Life® and the venues at SL12B.
It’s a pretty nifty little tour and was set up by the original owner/creator, Yavanna Llanfair, of the first ever pods in Second Life®.
I’m pretty sure I just butchered that explanation so you’ll just have to go along and check it out for yourself.

Like everything in Second Life® it’s only as good as you deem it to be. Some things will not fit with your aesthetic while other things will sing you the song of its people. It’s entirely up to you how you perceive, enjoy, learn or grow from this experience.

To keep up to dates with the news, events and talks that will be held at the Dreamitarium and the other venues around the place check out the official SL Community Celebration website.
Psst, all of the photo’s in this post link back to their site as well, just in case.

It was purely by accident that I stumbled into the 1920’s Berlin Project and found myself seated at this table.
You see, I was unceremoniously evicted from my comfy Pod Tour seat — thanks evil lag monster — and I was feeling a little hurt and rejected. So I thought I’d try to get my bearings and find my way back to Slimer the ghost train, since he seemed genuinely happy to see me (even if that was just to gobble me up).

Then I saw this gentleman sitting on a beach looking at photographs that were floating before him. All of the photographs together made up this one beautiful, yet sad, scene. It was exquisite. I thought I might sit down next to him — he isn’t real, don’t worry — and ponder the beauty of the people in these photographs.

So I right clicked and selected “sit”.
All good right?
Of course not! There wouldn’t be a story if it worked the way I expected it to!

Instead of sitting next to this man I found myself transported into the photograph, sitting at someone’s kitchen table. I sat there for a long while. Initially I was too shocked to move. I wasn’t expecting to be transported into something real like this. I wasn’t expecting to find myself face to face with the realities of life in 1920’s Berlin.

I began to feel anxious sitting there, like something terrible was going to happen. Perhaps I’d just be asked to leave? Or maybe some unidentified military personnel would barge into this tiny immaculate kitchen and destroy it?
Yes, I know it’s not that particular time in history, it’s pre-Nazi era, but I still had that sense of foreboding regardless.

This little kitchen, and my happy little accident in being here, transported me to another time. This exhibit does amazing things with the power of pixels. It moved me in a way I wasn’t sure I could be moved in Second Life®. For that I am so very grateful.

I won’t keep going because I have a lot more to explore before I start the next phase of my participation in SL12B: The Dreamy Hostess!

If you see me around please feel free to say hello! (I won’t always be working while I’m there! For those wondering why you’d have to say hello to a greeter).

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